I seriously doubt that (when it comes to actual news how many tweets are genuinely breaking the story and how many are just linking to the place that broke the story for instance ?) though in the absence of actual figures we're both speculating and to some extent it depends on how you define news.

But anyway, breaking news and having an exclusive aren't the same thing (an exclusive being an agreement between a news source and a news purveyor that the source won't go to anyone else with the story until the purveyor publishes).

An exclusive can also refer to literally that - a single non-syndicated reporter is the only person standing there (or on the phone) getting a particular set of quotes from the person being interviewed, with no exclusivity agreement in place, but rather exclusivity being the practical upshot of the situation. A news exclusive implies that's where the news is breaking; an exclusive interview usually just means the reporter is the only one getting those specific quotes, even if the gist of the information appears elsewhere (as other reporters in other interviews may ask questions that prompt similar answers).

I'm thinking with Chris Hemsworth hammering us (in a good way - however we want to take that...) with "Thor," and Joss being at the helm of "The Avengers," it might be a very wise move for CITW to be released later this year.

I'd just call that breaking a story (which is basically an exclusive without the agreement) but maybe that's splitting hairs. To me if an exclusive just refers to the first reporter to report a specific aspect then in some sense ALL stories are exclusives to someone and the term becomes meaningless (since in practice non-syndicated simultaneous reporting of exactly the same story is rare to non-existent, whatever the medium).

The point stands though that Twitter can't really be an exclusive source for any single reporter since it's a public medium (though granted, a story which is first reported on Twitter could - very briefly - be a Twitter exclusive).

Saje, I agree with you about Twitter. Not trying to be argumentative, but many interviews gleaned from roundtables for theatrical films and from "scrums" at post-panel and party interviews at the Television Critics Association result in a group of a number of reporters - though not a *huge* number of reporters (somewhere between three and ten, usually) - having *exactly* the same quotes, because they are all crowded around the interviewee, hearing each other's questions and getting answers that are available to everyone standing there. So if ten people gather around J.J. Abrams, it is possible to have ten very similar pieces based on exactly the same group of quotes.

I seriously doubt that (when it comes to actual news how many tweets are genuinely breaking the story and how many are just linking to the place that broke the story for instance ?) though in the absence of actual figures we're both speculating and to some extent it depends on how you define news.

This strikes me as Twitter breaking news. The eye witnesses are broadcasting their own experiences. It follows the same rationale as celebrities bypassing the media so they can control their message more directly.

I'm not saying it's always the case -- obviously there's a higher ratio of breaking news-to-nonsense on Twitter than on the networks (though that may be debatable ;)) -- but clearly there's precedent for breaking news via Twitter.

I'm absolutely not claiming Twitter can't break news stories Emmie (and Bin Laden is actually the example I had in mind myself cos it's recent and it's kind of huge news). I'm disagreeing with the stronger claim that Twitter is where most news stories now break. As I say though, it does depend what you call news - if you looked at the number of discreet "events that you didn't know about previously" that are "reported" I could well believe that Twitter now leads other news sources because of the sheer number of "reporters" it has, i'm just not sure "Saw my Mum at JFK today" or "Chilli day at the canteen, yay !" are actually news ;).

(it's a continuum though because anything, no-matter how seemingly trivial, might be news, at least to someone)

So if ten people gather around J.J. Abrams, it is possible to have ten very similar pieces based on exactly the same group of quotes.

Absolutely Shapenew, but what are the chances of them being posted simultaneously (to me, what's sometimes interesting/worrying about those round-table quotes BTW is the extent to which they're different from one report to the next) ? Also, look at non-roundtable junkets (as when actors promote a film but in those conveyor belt, one-on-one 10 minute private sessions with journalists) - the actor is very unlikely to use exactly the same words with each journalist (or at least not until the 5th or 6th hour of sitting in the same room answering the same questions in 10 minute chunks ;) so they'll get different quotes but no new news is actually being conveyed, by your definition that would be an exclusive, to me it isn't (or if it is the term becomes basically meaningless).

It sounds like hair splitting BTW (and to some extent it is ;) but as I mention above, I think something interesting is happening to the nature of news as a result of social media/distributed reporting which seems worth pondering.

(and don't worry about being argumentative BTW, to me that's no problem so long as everyone stays civil - which is the norm on here)

Saje, reasons reports from the same roundtables can vary are everything from word counts to publication priorities to something as mundane as recording device placement - what one reporter hears as "We're shooting some of 'Avengers' in Ohio" may wind up sounding to another reporter like "Wff smm Avhio." This could be skipped entirely or perhaps reported as, "We whiffed Oreos." (It would be wildly inaccurate, but most likely exclusive!) Sometimes there really are exclusives from conveyor belts, because some reporters may know to ask questions about (for example) other projects that can yield answers other reporters don't know to ask about.

A fair bit of googling is leading me to believe that your definition is how most news organisations see it Shapenew so I guess that's pretty much the definition. I still think it's a bit of a meaningless distinction and I think it's becoming even more meaningless given how quickly news circulates on the net but when you're wrong you're wrong *holds hands up* ;).

(in the past if you had a newspaper exclusive then it was yours until the next news cycle i.e. the next day or at least the next edition. Nowadays there's basically no news cycle as such, news is constantly regenerated/recirculated/reposted minute by minute 24/7 so i'm not sure that definition of 'exclusive' will be useful much longer, even inasmuch as it is now)

...reasons reports from the same roundtables can vary are everything from word counts to publication priorities to something as mundane as recording device placement...

Agreed, the reasons are many (i'd add bias and plain old incompetence to that list) but roundtable reports are often different, usually in minor ways, sometimes not. You'd think it'd be easier to get right than it apparently is.

This could be skipped entirely or perhaps reported as, "We whiffed Oreos."